"The cathedral is in the process of a period of restoration, and in the past couple of days has had sixteen bronze statues removed from the roof area in recent days to facilitate work. The fire appears to have started in the roof where work is taking place."
No word on what caused the fire. According to the Daily Mail, "[o]fficials in Paris said the fire could be linked to restoration works as the peak of the church is currently undergoing a 6 million-euro ($6.8 million) renovation project."
Note: The initial reports make it sound like this was some kind of construction-related accident, but I won't be surprised if the fire turns out to have been set intentionally:
"France has seen a spate of attacks against Catholic churches since the start of the year, vandalism that has included arson and desecration." Source: Newsweek (3/21/19)
"Vandals have smashed statues, knocked down tabernacles, scattered or destroyed the Eucharist and torn down crosses, sparking fears of a rise in anti-Catholic sentiment in the country."
If this does turn out to be a case of arson, whoever is responsible should be taken out and shot.
Update 8:46 PM CST: The fire is apparently under control, but the damage to the cathedral is extensive. Many art objects and relics have been rescued, but the spire collapsed (next video) and the famous stained-glass windows were apparently destroyed. According to firefighters the cathedral has been "gutted," but the frame is still intact.
What a tragedy. Macron says they will restore the cathedral, but the loss has been incalculable. A big part of France's cultural heritage has just gone up in smoke.
Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus (331 - 363 AD) was a great man and one of the last true Romans. He is more commonly known today as Julian the Apostate, the name he was given by the Christian church for his determined attempt to restore paganism in the dying Roman empire.
Born in Constantinople in 331, Julian was "placed in the care of an Arian bishop" as a child and "from 342 was confined for six years on an imperial estate in Cappadocia," according to the Oxford Classical Dictionary (OCD, 3rd ed. revised). "He impressed his Christian tutors there as a gifted and pious pupil, but his reading of the Greek classics was inclining him in private to other gods."
Christians who read and think too much tend to lose their faith, even if they're "heretics" like the Arians. "In 351, as a student of philosophy, [Julian] encountered pagan Neoplatonists and was initiated as a theurgist by Maximus of Ephesus," a Neoplatonist philosopher and magician who should be commemorated by pagans everywhere for the role he played in converting Julian to the traditional beliefs of the ancients.
Julian played a double game for years while waiting to see if he would be executed or made emperor. "For the next ten years Julian's pagan 'conversion' remained a prudently kept secret," according to the OCD. "He continued his studies in Asia and later at Athens until summoned to Milan by [Constantius II] to be married to the emperor's sister Helena and proclaimed Caesar with charge over Gaul and Britain."
Julian fought successful campaigns against the Alamanni and Franks that made him very popular with the army, which mutinied and declared him emperor after Constantius "ordered the transfer of choice detachments to the east..." (OCD). Luckily, civil war was avoided when Constantius died later that same year (361) and Julian took over Rome.
He publicly declared his paganism, purged the imperial court, issued a declaration of general religious tolerance that "foreshadowed a vigorous program of pagan activism in the interest of Hellenism," restored "the temples and finances of the ancestral cults," and established "a hierarchy of provincial and civic priesthoods." During the process, "Christian churches and clergy lost the financial subsidies and privileges gained under Constantine and his successors."
Julian discriminated in favor of pagans, but, unlike the Christians themselves, he didn't believe in using violence to persecute the people who didn't share his beliefs. Instead, he tried to marginalize Christianity, partly through argument, such as in his essay Against the Galileans, which is still well worth reading.
Julian's "learning and literary talent" as well as his control of the Roman legal apparatus could have changed the future course of the world in dramatic ways, but he was killed in a "minor skirmish" in his war against Persia after only three years in power. Wounded on June 26, 363, he died three days later on June 29, a day which should also be commemorated by pagans.
By the time of Julian, Rome was already in serious trouble and the western empire would collapse around a hundred years later. Ultimately, Julian was fighting a rearguard action against Christianity, but his reforms might have made a difference if he had lived longer. After all, Christianity owed much of its influence to official support and a lot of important people converted in order to gain the favor of the court. Once that support had been removed, who knows what might have happened?
The real Rome was a pagan, not a Christian, empire. In Julian's day, the empire was being destabilized and distorted beyond recognition by a foreign religion and Julian might have been able to turn that around.
"One of the persistent themes of Julian's antagonism towards the Christian church was his belief that they were troublemakers, causing political discord in any community where they formed the majority: 'they turn everything upside down.'" -- from the introduction to "Julian's Against the Galileans," edited and translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann, Prometheus Books, 2004.
Here's to Flavius Claudius Iulianus Augustus. Rest in peace.
"The battle was a significant defeat sustained by the crusaders during the Northern Crusades, which were directed against pagans and Eastern Orthodox Christians rather than Muslims in the Holy Land. The Crusaders' defeat in the battle marked the end of their campaigns against the Orthodox Novgorod Republic and other Slavic territories for the next century."
It's easy to forget that the Crusades weren't just fought against Muslims in the so-called Holy Land, but against pagans and other Christians in Europe. Technically, a crusade was any church-sanctioned campaign and military/religious orders, i.e., organized gangs, like the Teutonic Knights were used to forcibly convert or slaughter unbelievers and suppress rivals to Rome's hegemony. And the "holy warriors" went rogue sometimes, operating like bandits or mercenaries in the pursuit of their own interests when they weren't massacring Jews and Saracens or attacking Christian kingdoms.
This is how "orthodox" Christianity took over the West. The Eastern Orthodox Church managed to stand up to the onslaught, however. It is now the second largest Christian church in the world, due in large part to its military victories over Catholic forces:
"In the Battle of the Ice, the Teutonic Knights [1], a Catholic group, attempted to invade Russia and convert the Eastern Orthodox population of the Republic of Novgorod. This military campaign was part of the so-called Northern Crusades. Teutonic Knights involved in the Battle of the Ice were mostly Estonian, German, and Danish." Source: National Geographic.
"Russians, led by legendary figure Alexander Nevsky, repelled the invaders. Today, Lake Peipus still forms the central border between Russia and Estonia. Russia remains overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox and Estonia remains Catholic and Protestant."
[1] "Throughout the 13th and 14th century CE the Catholic Teutonic knights crusaded in Prussia and the Baltic area mainly against pagan Lithuanians and Orthodox Russians, but as the order was bent on expansion for its own sake, many other nationalities were fought besides those." (Ancient History Encyclopedia)
Despite the fact that he agreed to pay tribute to the Golden Horde, Alexander Nevsky is a legendary figure in Russia, a major national hero. Churches and cathedrals have been named after him. "On 24 September 2008, St. Alexander Nevsky was declared the main hero of Russia's history by popular vote ... In December 2008, he was voted the greatest Russian in the Name of Russia television poll." (Wikipedia)
"Hail and take heed, this is the tale one of the most famous Russian Heroes in history, second only to perhaps Vladimir of Kiev, the Baptizer of All Rus’. Few leaders have captured the hearts and minds of the Russians like Alexander Nevsky, who was voted Russia’s greatest leader of all time in 2008." Source: Russia Insider (2018).
"The Teutonic Order was formed to aid Christians on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land and to establish hospitals. Its members have commonly been known as the Teutonic Knights, having a small voluntary and mercenary military membership, serving as a crusading military order for protection of Christians in the Holy Land and the Baltics during the Middle Ages."
"The order was led by a Grand Master ... who was chosen by an electoral college and who was expected to consult his senior officers and commanders. In the 15th century CE, there was a second master in Livonia who became increasingly independent from the order based at its then headquarters in Prussia. It did sometimes happen that a master was ousted by his officers, indeed there was one case of murder of a particularly unpopular master. The order controlled many lands across Europe and the Middle East, the territories split into administrative provinces or balleien, each governed by a landmeister." Source: Ancient History Encyclopedia.
"The ruined church and monastic buildings that still stand on the island today are not Anglo-Saxon; they are the remains of the new priory built on the island in the late 11th century by the monks of Durham. So where is the original monastery? And what happened to it after the attack?" Source: DigVentures.
"All that is known to survive are some carved stone monuments of Anglo-Saxon date, which were found by archaeologists clearing away some of the collapsed rubble from the priory ruins in the late 19th and early 20th century."
Note: "... a major ... geophysical survey funded by National Geographic was carried out by Durham University in September 2012. This has shown that there is limited archaeological evidence for the monastic boundary that had previously been postulated, but an alternative boundary has been identified, which is associated with an area of possible industrial activity. It also identified a probably infirmary cloister associated with the later priory and a possible structure aligned on the two standing churches." Source: Durham University.
"French Gothic architecture is a style which emerged in France in 1140, and was dominant until the mid-16th century. The most notable examples are the great Gothic cathedrals of France, including Notre Dame Cathedral, Chartres Cathedral, and Amiens Cathedral. Its main characteristics were the search for verticality, or height, and the innovative use of flying buttresses and other architectural innovations to distribute the weight of the stone structures to supports on the outside, allowing unprecedented height and volume ..." (Wikipedia)
Comment: If France becomes a Muslim country, something that could very well happen if current trends continue, these beautiful old cathedrals could end up being destroyed or turned into mosques or museums like the Hagia Sophia, the former Greek Orthodox cathedral in Istanbul. There have already been several terrorist attacks right outside Notre Dame cathedral and how long will it be before some ISIS-inspired or connected scumbag tries to blow up the cathedral itself?
In the case of Notre Dame, there may be no need to blow up the cathedral since the French state (which owns the cathedral and seventy other churches in Paris) has been doing a good job of letting it fall into disrepair:
"For 13 million visitors per year, Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris soars in splendor. But beyond its façade, look closely, and you'll see that the majestic medieval monument is falling apart. Now, a foundation in France hopes Americans will donate money to help save the place that's home to some of Catholicism's most important relics, including the crown of thorns said to have been worn by Jesus." Source: CBS News (2018).
I'm not sure if any renovation work has actually started. More information about the damage to the cathedral and how to make donations can be found at the Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris site.
"A nun who faked her own death, an archbishop who went into battle with an army of clergymen, and why being a priest was the most dangerous job of the Middle Ages: these are just some of the stories beginning to emerge from fourteenth-century records held in the University of York’s archives." Source: Archaeology News Network.
"Joan of Leeds was fed up of her life in a medieval nunnery. By 1318, her urge to escape the vows she had pledged to poverty, chastity and obedience had grown so strong that she resorted to faking her own death."
Note: According to the story, Joan faked an illness and her own death, then tricked the other nuns into burying a dummy. This seems unlikely, to say the least -- unless the other nuns were blind as bats -- but apparently some of them helped her to pull it off:
"A number of Joan's fellow nuns aided and abetted her plan, although it is less certain whether they did so willingly or were tricked into helping her. Believing—or pretending to believe—her to be dead, and to being deceived by the dummy, they buried it as her—with full Catholic rites—'in a sacred space amongst the religious of that place', wrote Archbishop Melton [who discovered her escape]. Joan's motives for escaping the nunnery are unknown, but the Archbishop put it down to a desire to follow 'the way of carnal lust', which she was unable to do in orders having taken vows of poverty and chastity."
1,707 years after Galerius's Edict of Toleration ended the persecution of Christians which started under Diocletian, the religion that once exercised absolute dominion over the West is rapidly disappearing from Europe. That's not very surprising, though. Even the United States is becoming less religious and Christianity as an institution has been in decline for a very long time now.
(1) Early Christianity wasn't a single movement with a unified belief system, but this gradually changed after Catholicism became the official religion of Rome and the church began its centuries-long process of stamping out "heretical movements." Very roughly speaking, and taking into consideration the fact that the eastern and western churches of the time had distinct differences, Christianity survived as a near-monolithic religious institution for about a thousand years before it started to fall apart.
Video from 2016.
The rise of science and the spread of secularism accelerated the decline of Christianity in the West. Some denominations have attempted to "adapt to the times" by dropping or "interpreting" their mythology and transforming themselves into little more than progressive social-work institutions, but these congregations are in rapid decline. Conservative churches which preach a defiant fundamentalism are thriving in the United States and Christianity is apparently exploding in the Third World.
According to Chuck Colson, "the percentage of the world's population that is, at least by name [emphasis added], Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.
"But at that point, only one-fifth of the worlds Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. The typical Christian will be a woman living in a Nigerian village or in a Brazilian shantytown."
Video from 2016.
After almost 2,000 years, the historical trajectory of the rise and fall of Christianity is becoming clear. The religion originated in the Near East, spread into the Roman empire, rose to the height of its power in medieval Europe, then began to fragment and decline. This decline has been a long, complex process that started centuries ago and it has accelerated dramatically during the last hundred years or so in the western, developed world:
"The decline of Christianity is a widespread, ongoing phenomenon that has affected the Western world, developed countries and denominations in the post-World War II era, which have shifted towards a post-Christian, secular, globalized, multicultural, and multireligious society. Infant baptism has declined in many nations. Thousands of churches have had to close or merge and mainline Protestant denominations in the United States lost many members of their congregations." (Wikipedia)
Christianity has been struggling to survive the transition to the so-called postmodern world, itself a symptom of the overall decline of the West. The religion has been under attack for a long time now, but the biggest problem is that religion in general is no longer believable to most educated people. In Europe, even the church's own leaders don't seem to believe its teachings anymore, a sure sign that the religion is in its last stages in countries like Britain, where many churches are being closed, turned into historical museums or converted into mosques. As a result, Christianity is dying off in the West and thriving in the Third World. It will survive in the form of die-hard fundamentalist sects and the various syncretic mixtures of Christianity and native religions now spreading through places like South America, Asia and Africa.
Video from 2010.
Christianity is finished in Europe and declining in the United States, but it will continue to thrive in its original form as a prescientific, preliterate religion in the Third World. "In 1900, 80 percent of Christians lived in Europe and North America. In 2000, 60 percent lived in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with many in developing countries." (Facts and Details) By 2050, if present trends continue, "four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa" and "the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world." (Pew Research Center (2015))
"Books of Hours are private devotional books that were enormously popular with wealthy Catholics in the fifteenth century. They were typically structured around the hourly prayers observed in monasteries, and devout Catholics were expected to stop eight times a day and recite the appropriate liturgy." Source: Abe Books.
These fantastic illuminated books are valuable collector's items today. "As a group, Books of Hours are arguably the most beautiful of all books. They are also some of the most expensive, with modest examples starting in five figures. One of the finest Book of Hours -- the richly illuminated Rothschild Prayerbook -- sold for a record $13.5 million (£8.6 million) in 1999."
Comment: Considering all the time, money and painstaking craftsmanship that went into creating these masterpieces, it's obvious that they weren't just simple prayer books. Books of Hours are classic examples of conspicuous consumption. Back in the medieval world, they were a display of affluence, of discretionary economic power and the political influence that goes along with it. As hyper-expensive collector's items, they're still symbols of wealth, sometimes massive wealth as in the case of the Rothschild Prayer Book. This is more than a little ironic considering their content and Jesus' teachings about the "poor in spirit," but this tension between spirituality and earthly power runs all through the history of the Christian church.
These are beautiful books, works of art, but they're too safe, too harmless to be really interesting. Nobody would have gotten into trouble for owning a Book of Hours containing devotions presumably authorized by the church. I like my medieval books to be more dangerous than that. The most interesting ones were the grimoires and banned Bible translations that had to be hidden away on pain of death or banishment. Handcrafted books gave their contents a kind of magical power, especially in an age of widespread illiteracy, and the most powerful books were full of forbidden knowledge. Books are mass-produced today, but we still have forbidden books that can't be displayed openly and have to be read more or less in secret. The public denunciations and rituals of secrecy surrounding these books give their contents an aura of dark energy that you'll never find in a mass market paperback.
"A tower of human skulls unearthed beneath the heart of Mexico City has raised new questions about the culture of sacrifice in the Aztec Empire after crania of women and children surfaced among the hundreds embedded in the forbidding structure." Source: Reuters (July 2017).
"Archaeologists have found more than 650 skulls caked in lime and thousands of fragments in the cylindrical edifice near the site of the Templo Mayor, one of the main temples in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan, which later became Mexico City."
Next video shows some of the ruins and artifacts of Templo Mayor. Several documentaries about the temple can be found on YouTube, but most of them are only available in Spanish.
The Aztecs weren't the first MesoAmerican civilization to practice human sacrifice -- the earlier Olmecs are also thought to have butchered people on top of pyramids -- but the Aztecs took the practice to "an unprecedented scale," according to the Ancient History Encyclopedia, which goes on to point out that the early stories about Aztec bloodthirstiness were probably exaggerated by the Spanish in an attempt to justify their own brutality against the natives.
"Blood-Drenched Altars will be a surprising, if not indeed a shocking, revelation to modern readers. For here is contained the key to understanding Mexico. Tracing the history of Mexico from its very beginnings, the author outlines the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Indians under Montezuma and exposes the lie that the Spanish destroyed a flourishing Indian civilization. Rather, this book shows how they ended an Aztec reign of terror over the other Indian tribes, highlighted by human sacrifice and cannibalism on an unprecedented scale--some estimates being 80,000 a year sacrificed and as many as 20,000 at one festival." -- from the back cover of Blood-Drenched Altars.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested not only in getting both sides of the story but in reading history as it was written before political correctness polluted our entire culture. Whether you accept the Catholic version of events or not, there's no doubt that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice on a massive scale:
"Conducted at specially dedicated temples on the top of large pyramids such as at Tenochtitlan, Texcoco and Tlacopan, sacrifices were most often carried out by stretching the victim over a special stone, cutting open the chest and removing the heart using an obsidian or flint knife." (Ancient History Encyclopedia) Next video demonstrates how this could have been done.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the conquistadors and the priests who followed them exaggerated the numbers of Aztec sacrificial victims. After all, it's unlikely that the Spanish actually counted the people being led to the tops of pyramids to have their hearts torn out. But if archaeologists are still digging up "towers of human skulls" in Mexico City, it's obvious that the Aztecs were killing a lot of people. Their brutality against their neighbors was one of the main reasons the Spanish had no trouble defeating the Aztec Empire.
This latest discovery doesn't "cast new light" on the Aztecs. Rather, it confirms once again what we already know about them.
Christianity Is Becoming A Third-World Religion
1,707 years after Galerius's Edict of Toleration ended the persecution of Christians which started under Diocletian, the religion that once exercised absolute dominion over the West is rapidly disappearing from Europe. That's not very surprising, though. Even the United States is becoming less religious and Christianity as an institution has been in decline for a very long time now.
The history of Christianity has been one of schisms and fragmentation, a long process of disintegration caused by theological disputes, administrative squabbles and church corruption. When the Catholic church lost its monopoly during the Protestant Reformation, Christianity as a unified institution (1) ceased to exist. Protestantism itself went through a long chain-reaction of schisms with the result that there are now hundreds of Christian denominations in the world.
(1) Early Christianity wasn't a single movement with a unified belief system, but this gradually changed after Catholicism became the official religion of Rome and the church began its centuries-long process of stamping out "heretical movements." Very roughly speaking, and taking into consideration the fact that the eastern and western churches of the time had distinct differences, Christianity survived as a near-monolithic religious institution for about a thousand years before it started to fall apart.
Video from 2016.
The rise of science and the spread of secularism accelerated the decline of Christianity in the West. Some denominations have attempted to "adapt to the times" by dropping or "interpreting" their mythology and transforming themselves into little more than progressive social-work institutions, but these congregations are in rapid decline. Conservative churches which preach a defiant fundamentalism are thriving in the United States and Christianity is apparently exploding in the Third World.
According to Chuck Colson, "the percentage of the world's population that is, at least by name [emphasis added], Christian will be roughly the same in 2050 as it was in 1900. By the middle of this century, there will be three billion Christians in the world -- one and a half times the number of Muslims. In fact, by 2050 there will be nearly as many Pentecostal Christians in the world as there are Muslims today.
"But at that point, only one-fifth of the worlds Christians will be non-Hispanic whites. The typical Christian will be a woman living in a Nigerian village or in a Brazilian shantytown."
Video from 2016.
After almost 2,000 years, the historical trajectory of the rise and fall of Christianity is becoming clear. The religion originated in the Near East, spread into the Roman empire, rose to the height of its power in medieval Europe, then began to fragment and decline. This decline has been a long, complex process that started centuries ago and it has accelerated dramatically during the last hundred years or so in the western, developed world:
"The decline of Christianity is a widespread, ongoing phenomenon that has affected the Western world, developed countries and denominations in the post-World War II era, which have shifted towards a post-Christian, secular, globalized, multicultural, and multireligious society. Infant baptism has declined in many nations. Thousands of churches have had to close or merge and mainline Protestant denominations in the United States lost many members of their congregations." (Wikipedia)
Christianity has been struggling to survive the transition to the so-called postmodern world, itself a symptom of the overall decline of the West. The religion has been under attack for a long time now, but the biggest problem is that religion in general is no longer believable to most educated people. In Europe, even the church's own leaders don't seem to believe its teachings anymore, a sure sign that the religion is in its last stages in countries like Britain, where many churches are being closed, turned into historical museums or converted into mosques. As a result, Christianity is dying off in the West and thriving in the Third World. It will survive in the form of die-hard fundamentalist sects and the various syncretic mixtures of Christianity and native religions now spreading through places like South America, Asia and Africa.
Video from 2010.
Christianity is finished in Europe and declining in the United States, but it will continue to thrive in its original form as a prescientific, preliterate religion in the Third World. "In 1900, 80 percent of Christians lived in Europe and North America. In 2000, 60 percent lived in Africa, Asia and Latin America, with many in developing countries." (Facts and Details) By 2050, if present trends continue, "four out of every 10 Christians in the world will live in sub-Saharan Africa" and "the number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world." (Pew Research Center (2015))
Updated Feb. 2019
Related:
Why There Is No Way Back For Religion In The West.
Is Religion Dying Out?
Where Churches Have Become Temples of Cheese, Fitness and Eroticism
Posted at 07:00 AM in Catholic Church, Christianity, Collapse, Commentary, Europe, Religion, Videos | Permalink